


hurry leave me

by persepoline



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: (if you consider passive-aggressive smoochin "a relationship"), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, Established Relationship, Head Injury, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persepoline/pseuds/persepoline
Summary: They orbit one another until they can't anymore.





	1. natori shuuichi

☉

Natori Shuuichi stared out the train window at the cables of the passing suspension bridge, lit gold in the mid-morning glare like the wires you found when you opened up a piano to see its innards. He’d had to do that recently, for a soap opera that was likely in post-production by now. Natori, cast in the role of a music instructor who fell for the repair woman in charge of instrument restoration at a major league conservatoire, had insisted on doing his own playing. This idea was met with considerable backlash from the rest of the team.

“We’re bringing in a concert pianist from Toho Gakuen,” said the director, chewing indignantly on the end of a toothpick. “The sound guys will record her and cut the songs in later. You don’t have to do any of it yourself.”

“But I’d like to,” Natori had said. He was a fast learner. It wouldn’t put them behind schedule by more than a handful of days, if he practiced in earnest.

In the end, the studio had won out.

“I don’t see what you’re worried about,” the director said. “Even if you manage to learn the piano before we start shooting - which I most severely doubt - it’s not as if you’re going to outdo a contracted professional.”

Natori shrugged. “It feels disingenuous,” he said, blithe as could be.

At that, the director had laughed so hard Natori feared he might swallow his toothpick. “You’re an actor,” he said at last. “I’d advise you to get used to that feeling.”

_Don't worry._

The train was moving now at such a speed that the landscape folded in on itself, blurring in long watercolor streaks on the opposite side of the pane. He’d booked a seat at one of the booths with a little plastic table in the center, protruding from the wall for the convenience of patrons who fancied a sandwich or bento during the journey. Across the table sat Matoba Seiji in an immaculate black tracksuit, looking delighted in a way that only someone unaccustomed to using public transportation had any right to look on the shinkansen.

“Remind me again why I’m needed?”

Matoba placed his reading material - a map of their destination - on the table, and spun it to face Natori. A slender forefinger indicated a point close to the map’s center. “This library is one of the oldest in the prefecture.”

Natori bent over the map and noticed a spot highlighted in green, two or three inches to the left of where Seiji’s finger had landed. Gingerly, he lifted the finger and moved it until the green dot was no longer visible. “You mean here?”

Matoba smiled his most pleasant smile: the one Natori had seen eviscerate hardened politicians on more than one occasion. “Yes,” he said. “From what I’ve gathered, it’s practically a landmark to those living closeby.”

Natori scratched at his chin. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It was nominated for Special Historical Site status four years ago. Nanase and I spoke to the Agency for Cultural Affairs.” Matoba leaned back in his chair. “They wanted to turn it into a tourist destination, but we managed to convince them otherwise.”

He said it so _nonchalantly_ , as if private entities having a hand in civic proceedings was an appropriate topic for casual conversation, polite society. Natori reminded himself not to grind his teeth; bad for the enamel.

“The place is unsafe for the public,” Matoba continued. “Something lives there.”

Natori felt himself nodding. “Fair enough, but what's stopping you from taking care of it on your own?”

Matoba's voice was neutral, as it often was. “Nothing's stopping me,” he said. “But I’d prefer to consult a specialist for this job.”

Natori raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh?”

“Technically speaking, libraries are vast collections of paper,” Matoba said with a shrug. “You’re an expert in paper, aren’t you, Shuuichi?”

Inwardly, Natori sighed. This whole excursion was a landmine of his own making. He had admittedly, in recent months, spent more time with the heir of the Matoba clan than he’d ever anticipated. It had started almost by accident: during a long, dull meeting that he ought to have skipped entirely, but didn’t. The assembled exorcists decided to break for afternoon tea, and Matoba took up position beside the refreshments table, no doubt to subliminally intimidate whoever was brave enough to try for a plate of manju and a cup of something caffeinated. Natori strategically positioned himself at the opposite end of the refreshments table, eager to put at least an expensive-looking cheese platter in between himself and his host. Moments later, he heard a splash, a pained wince, an intake of breath so sharp it could have cut crystal. Natori was on the other side of the refreshments table in seconds.

“Let me see,” he’d said instinctively, reaching for the hand Matoba had just spilled scalding coffee on. “How bad is it?” Unthinking, he took Seiji’s hand in his own, prying the fingers apart and flattening the palm to get a better look. It was a bad burn indeed, but not bad enough to warrant a visit to a clinic.

But when Natori had looked up, the expression on Matoba’s face was one he’d never seen before - not even during their high school days. Matoba Seiji was _surprised_. This was a novelty to Natori, who realized in that moment that he’d apparently cataloged all the emotions he’d ever seen laid out on Matoba’s face over the years. Those emotions were irritation, facetious curiosity, formal stoicism, smug contentedness, and a dangerous look that Natori couldn’t quite place but wasn’t fond of. When things went unexpectedly well, Matoba did not look surprised. When things _did not_ go according to plan, still Matoba never looked surprised. And yet the poker face that had etched itself on the surface of Natori’s memory was gone, wiped blank for a fraction of a second and replaced with something new.

Natori found he wouldn’t mind seeing that look on Matoba’s face more often, and later resolved to make it happen.

It was simple cause and effect: action, reaction. It was like eating sweets to induce a sugar rush - or pressing fingertips to a bruise, knowing full well that pain would follow. Natori had developed a dependence on that look of surprise.

Surprise when Natori pulled Matoba aside after exorcist parlour gatherings.

Surprise when Natori leaned in close when no one was looking, and asked in a low voice if Seiji would join him in the garden.

A soft surprise when Natori pressed him into a mattress on a cold day in January, and on a windy day in March, and on a clear day in early April, and on other days in between.

In the beginning, he figured that eventually Matoba’s surprise would wear off altogether, and Natori would lose interest and be freed at long last from these funny games - but his prediction came true only in part. By the time Seiji’s surprise wore away, Natori found he had grown addicted to other things: the crease that formed between Seiji’s brows when he was concentrating very hard, the way his fingers curled to tuck a stray lock of hair back into his ponytail, his absentminded humming. Seiji’s joy, at once muted and electric, when he discovered something he hadn’t meant to - something about people, something about ayakashi, something about Natori. Joy like a spark plug fizzling under a bell jar. Repressed, but irrefutably there all the same.

The situation had, as far as Natori was concerned, gotten wildly out of hand.

“Alright. Wake me up if there’s an emergency,” he said, and drew the brim of his hat pointedly over his eyes.

Matoba said something, Natori was sure, but the remark was lost in the sound of the air rushing past as the train dipped into a tunnel, and suddenly the world was plunged into midnight at noon.

**. . .**

Natori blinked himself awake. Realizing he’d pretended to sleep so convincingly that he may have actually drifted off, Natori checked his watch and saw that three hours had passed. He suppressed a yawn, stretched. A colorful assortment of prepackaged snack items was spread before him on the table. He looked to Matoba, who was squinting his way through what appeared to be a book on local folktales.

“The stewardess came around,” he said, barely glancing up. “I’m not sure what you like, so I got all of them.”

Natori was momentarily taken aback. The gesture might have been sweet, if he hadn’t been scandalized by the decadence of it. “Thank you,” Natori said simply, and pocketed a handful of chocolates.

The train squealed to a stop not ten minutes later, and the exorcists unloaded their personal effects. It did not take long; both were light packers. Natori watched Matoba sling what passed for an unusually thin golf club bag over one shoulder; inside, an unsuspecting railway official would find fine-tipped arrows and a collapsible fiberglass bow. From there, the exorcists took another, smaller train further into the countryside: the journey was a short one, and they dismounted at the second-to-last stop, in a town beside a steep, forested hill.

By the time they made it to their hotel, the light had taken on the weighted tones of late afternoon. When the receptionist left the desk to fetch the room keys, Natori turned to Matoba.

“What?” He laughed, playing at shock. “You didn’t book the whole floor?”

Matoba shot him a somber sideways look. “No need to attract unsolicited attention.”

“But you don’t even know which room I’ll take a liking to,” Natori pointed out.

The skin around Matoba’s visible eye crinkled, fractionally. “A travesty.”

**. . .**

Upon further inspection, the book Matoba had been reading on the train was not a folklore anthology, but a single story: a picture book aimed at children no older than seven, by the look of it. Natori flipped casually through as the exorcists made their way to the library on foot.

Illustrated in bright colors and simple shapes, the book told of an enchanted tree that watched over a forest ceaselessly - in rain, in snow, in scorching heat, until one day it was chopped down by an enterprising woodsman. That night, the woodsman was visited by a woman clad in robes made of delicate, wafer-thin paper. The phantom tormented the woodsman’s dreams; he was unable to work during the day because he no longer slept at night, and his family fell into destitution. Finally, the woodsman’s daughter decided to do something about this predicament. She took up her father’s axe and ventured deep into the forest, where she found the stump of the tree which the woodsman had felled. The woman with paper-thin robes appeared at once before her. _‘I am the spirit of this tree,’_ the phantom told the girl. _‘Your father cut off my eyes, and now I cannot watch over the forest.’_   The woodsman’s daughter said, _‘I will make you new eyes, Lady.’_   She took up her father’s axe, and cut her own finger, and with her own red blood drew a pair of eyes on the tree stump. But because the heart of the woodsman’s daughter was true and because the forest was very old, her blood became reviving water, and the stump began to grow until it was a towering tree once more. The woodsman’s daughter returned home, and her family was not troubled by angry spirits again.

“A fable, or a cautionary tale?” asked Natori when they came to a stop in front of the building. The sun was beginning to set, and the light played well on the library’s brick walls.

“Maybe both.”

“A bit morbid for young kids, don’t you think?” Natori asked wryly.

“Not really.” Matoba fished for something in the depths of his rucksack. “The clan was gifted this book by its author. This copy is from the very first print run, take a look at the title page.” Natori didn’t, opting to take Matoba’s word for it.

“The author is Nanase’s age now,” Seiji continued. “A very interesting woman. She grew up in this town, born and raised. Contacted us when she heard we’d bought the place--”

“Hang on.” Natori pinched the bridge of his nose. “The clan - you _bought the library?”_

“Did you think we were breaking and entering, Shuuichi?" A spark of amusement tinged Matoba’s voice. “It was a necessary purchase. We could hardly let the Cultural Affairs people turn it into a museum. I told you, something lives here. Besides,” he added briskly, “it wasn’t as if the building was being used. This place has been out of commission for decades.”

Natori snorted. “If it’s such a threat, why didn’t you do something about it four years ago? Why are we here now?”

“Priorities,” said Matoba. “The creature that lives here isn’t continually active. It seems to have,” he paused thoughtfully, “phases.”

Natori watched him feed a cartoonishly sinister-looking key into the lock affixed to the library’s rear entrance. The door did not swing open on creaking hinges, but it might as well have. The atmosphere certainly felt conducive to that particular brand of theatricality, Natori mused.

Matoba sprung his fiberglass bow open, and drew an arrow from its quiver. The exorcists exchanged a look and stepped carefully out of the living world, making sure to close the door behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so self-indulgent, alexa play "first love/late spring"


	2. matoba seiji

☉

It was dark inside the library.

The floorboards beneath Matoba’s feet did not groan, but he didn’t feel particularly inclined to trust them in any case. The air was cool and dank and smelled like dead leaves, not unlike the air at the bottom of deep chasms and empty wells. Beside him, he could hear Shuuichi moving, skin on rough plaster, fumbling for a lightswitch.

“Bulbs are out,” Matoba heard him declare after a moment. “Not sure what else I expected.” Another brief moment elapsed in darkness, before Matoba found himself staring directly into the blinding face of a battery-operated torch. He winced involuntarily, ducking out of the flashlight’s white beam.

“Oh! Sorry.” The pool of light darted away, illuminating the room: rows upon rows of lightweight steel shelves stood at attention like vacant infantry soldiers. No sound but the delicate _plink!_ of dripping water, beating out a steady rhythm on some unseen section of decomposing floor.

“What are we looking for, exactly?”

Matoba pressed the knuckles of his right hand into the skin of his eyelid. Artificial sunspots swam in his vision. “We’ll know it when we see it,” he said, and moved on.

The exorcists made their way across what appeared to be the library’s central atrium, following the switchback trail of the shelving, sweeping the rows one by one. The circle of light cast by the electric torch flitted down the length of the main foyer, bobbing like an enlarged firefly. Floorboards and plaster gave way to linoleum and disintegrating carpet. Minutes passed and passed again, and they found themselves at the foot of a broad staircase.

The ceiling loomed down to meet them, and Matoba found he felt colder than he had a moment ago. “Mind your step,” he said, and began to climb.

The stench of decay awaited them on the upper floor. The contents of this room were clearly older than the contents of the room below: wooden shelves instead of metal, and at every turn the smell of rot hung thick in the air.

“They’re full,” Shuuichi murmured, his flashlight sweeping the space. Books sat solemnly, neat and orderly. Matoba watched him step closer to inspect the shelves. “And they’re alphabetized.”

It was true: the stacks were organized according to the characters in the authors’ surnames. Undisturbed. Matoba selected a book at random and pulled it from the shelf, throwing up clouds of dust and mildew. When he opened it, the pages stuck together. “Rotten,” he declared, putting it back.

“When was the library closed for good?” Shuuichi asked as they made their way down the narrow aisle.

“Two decades ago, give or take a year.” Shadows shrank and stretched along the floor. “This branch was closed and most of the books were moved elsewhere - probably to a new building with better facilities. The books that weren’t in good condition were deemed unsalvageable and left behind.”

“Ah.” They had come to the end of the aisle, and Shuuichi lifted his arm to let Matoba go ahead of him. “So these books were already falling apart twenty years ago.”

“Precisely,” Matoba said as he rounded the shelf into the next aisle. “These books would have been some of the oldest in the library, even then.” He stopped so abruptly that Shuuichi nearly ran into the back of him, stepping on the heels of his shoes. “Do you hear that? Watch your feet.”

“You---nevermind.” Shuuichi sounded irritated. “Hear what?”

It was a protracted groan, long and loud and low, like something solid being bent out of shape - followed by a sharp crash, wood on wood, and then another crash, closer this time. Another, closer still.

“What--?” They looked at each other, and Matoba saw realization in Shuuichi’s eyes a second too late. What they heard was the sound of the shelves toppling over one another: a one-directional domino effect.

“Get down!” They were standing in the center of the aisle, thirty feet from either end with no chance of escape in sight. Matoba ducked, grabbing ahold of Shuuichi’s coat sleeve and tugging at him until he dropped to his knees.

The exorcists made themselves as small as physically possible - and not a moment too soon. The shelf to their left came crashing down, bringing the righthand shelf down with it not half a second later. Books rained down and Matoba had to drop his fiberglass bow, throwing his hands up to protect himself from a particularly hefty romance novel. The crashing continued for what felt like anywhere between five minutes and a year, until the last shelf hit the wall at the opposite end of the building, and visibility decreased exponentially as the room was engulfed in dust.

“I’m alive,” Shuuichi said before erupting into a coughing fit. “Are you alive? Because I’m alive.”

“Move.” Matoba prodded him in the ribs. “We need to move.” Above them, two shelves met in mid-air, creating a lean-to - albeit a precarious, smelly one. Matoba didn’t like the idea of being where he was when all that worm-infested wood gave out, as it inevitably would. He recovered his bow and began to feel around for the flashlight, discarded earlier in haste and alarm.

“Well,” said Shuuichi tersely, after they had crawled out from under the collapse. “Do you reckon we can put that down to local delinquents?” His voice was drier than ever.

Matoba had spotted no graffiti on the way in, no cigarette butts downstairs, nothing to indicate nefarious teenage activity. He shook his head.

Shuuichi clicked his tongue, and went back to dusting off his trousers. No matter how much time Matoba spent with Shuuichi, the amount of energy the man was capable of spending _dusting off his trousers_ never failed to surprise him. It was as if he kept an inexhaustible trove of effort on reserve for wardrobe management exclusively.

Matoba cast the torch on the wreckage. He had carefully indexed the books four years prior, when the clan had purchased the building and all its contents, and had discovered nothing worthy of note. Cookbooks, children’s stories, academic nonfiction, paperback crime thrillers, dictionaries - exactly what one might expect to find in the attic of a municipal library. Nothing of use, just a job to be done. A task to be completed. Matoba nudged the closest book with the toe of his sneaker. _Nothing of use._

The book flew upwards, as if propelled by invisible force, and hit him rather hard in the shoulder before flopping back to the ground as if it had momentarily forgotten how books ought to behave.

Matoba blinked. “Shuuichi,” he said.

A little ways off, Shuuichi was still doing what he did best: dusting off his trousers and looking considerably unbothered by the whole affair. “Hm?”

“I advise you to refrain from making any sudden movements.”

Shuuichi coughed into his elbow, batting at the settling dust motes. “Why sh--” He didn’t get the opportunity to finish the sentence on account of the encyclopedia that came hurtling toward him at a speed that would have intimidated most semi-professional baseball pitchers, and hit him squarely in the face.

Things happened very fast after that.

It was like facing a swarm of bees, or a murder of crows, or a school of fish - fish with hard spines and sharp edges. The library launched itself, at first book by book and then all at once, at the exorcists. Matoba found himself reciting the incantation for protection almost automatically, each syllable of the chant coming unbidden to him - but he only managed to make it three stanzas in before another book hit him in the jaw, interrupting the flow of the spell and forcing him to start over again. From the sound of things, Shuuichi was having similar problems: Matoba could hear him calling out in vain for his shiki.

Pages tore themselves from their bindings with such ferocity that they rent the spines of their books in twain. The sound of the paper alone was deafening: it struck the exorcists and remained attached to the wall, suspended at any height and piling up rapidly.

Matoba tried to move an arm, and found it pinned to the wall by the sheer weight of accumulating paper. If this continued for much longer, they were going to suffocate.

“Natori Shuuichi!” Matoba called above the din, “I need you to finish a spell for me.”

He did not have to describe the incantation he was referring to; like all exorcists worth their name, Shuuichi knew the basic chants: protection, in its myriad forms. Words to keep wickedness away. The core scholarship was almost entirely defensive, rather than offensive - something Matoba sought to rectify, in time.

The exorcists took their leave as soon as they were able. They ran, sparing backward glances only once they reached the relative safety of the first floor.

Outside the library, afternoon had long since melted into evening. Now nighttime was setting in, sinking into the bones of the sky like a shroud.

“I don’t feel so good.” Shuuichi rubbed the side of his head with the sleeve of his peacoat, looking either very perplexed or very nauseous. Matoba could think of no way to comment on this remark, and elected to ignore it.

“Your elocution has improved since last I heard it,” he said instead, once he caught his breath.

Shuuichi gave him a look that could have withered fruit where it grew on the vine. He opened his mouth to say something - probably nothing insightful, statistically speaking - and abruptly closed it again. A strange look came over his face. Natori turned and bent over the asphalt pavement just in time to empty the contents of his stomach somewhere other than Matoba’s shoes.

It took Seiji a moment to realize what was happening, and then it clicked. “You’re concussed,” he said aloud.

Natori straightened and attempted what might have been a wink - the effect was ruined somewhat by the trail of blood creeping slowly from his hairline. “Wouldn’t you like to know, eh?”

_Very concussed._

Matoba lifted a hand to Shuuichi’s forehead, stepping in close to examine the lump that was rising on his scalp. The cut itself was small, already beginning to clot. “Don’t flirt with a concussion,” he said, pulling back. “The end result is bad for everyone involved.” He thumbed the flashlight off and stowed it in his shoulder bag. “You should get yourself to a clinic before they all close for the night. I’ll stay here and plan a course of action.”

Shuuichi made a face that was dangerously close to pouting. “I’ll stay here. I’m fine.”

“You just threw up in the gutter.”

“My stomach is empty now, so you don’t have to worry about it happening again.”

Matoba massaged his temple. The back of his neck was starting to feel like the inside of a pudding cup: one of the first telltale omens of an oncoming headache. “At least head back to the hotel. Get some rest, if you won’t seek medical attention.”

Shuuichi looked triumphant. “You can’t go to sleep for at least eight hours after sustaining a concussion,” he said. “I read that. Somewhere. I’m staying with you.”

“Fine!” Matoba resisted the urge to throw up his hands. Instead, he balled them into fists inside the sleeves of his hoodie, where no one would notice. _He’s going to slow me down._

He was turning away when Shuuichi reached out, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you know your-- thing is missing, yeah?”

Matoba froze, fingers drifting upwards to feel for an eyepatch he knew wasn’t where it should be. It must have come off somewhere in the tumult.

“No matter,” he said, but under his breath Matoba recited a fresh warding incantation. Words against evil. It wasn’t as if Shuuichi hadn’t seen it already.

**. . .**

The first time had been the previous month, when the two of them had convened for three days at a ryokan in Aomori. The family in charge of the inn had concerns about the possibility of a haunting, and had invited a handful of representatives from exorcist factions to stay for consultation. Shuuichi had had the good sense to extend his invite, and Matoba had rearranged his schedule that week in order to meet him. As it turned out, the ryokan was not haunted at all - the scratching sounds heard at night by frightened tourists were the result of a fairly serious rodent infestation, nothing more. The innkeeper allowed the exorcists to stay anyway, as payment for their trouble.

“Do you like it?” Matoba had asked when he caught Shuuichi staring. “I think it makes me look very striking.” He could hardly wear the eyepatch in an onsen; it just wasn’t practical.

“I think it makes you look like you were in a nasty accident,” said Shuuichi pensively, sinking deeper into the hot spring, “which you were, in a way.”

 _He’s embarrassed,_ Matoba thought. Most people were, once they realised they’d been looking for a little too long. The scar stretched from the lower end of his cheekbone up through the socket, ending just above his brow. Even without the scar, the eye alone unsettled people: the pupil was cloudy and compromised, the cornea an angry red from punctured blood vessels that refused to vanish even after they healed. Matoba watched his reflection warp and scatter into ripples as he lowered himself into the steaming water.

“Accident,” he repeated, before putting his head under.

They had slept together before - in that tiny tent that hadn’t been nearly as waterproof as the outdoor sporting goods salesman who’d sold it to Shuuichi had promised; in sleeping bags on the floor of that dilapidated train station a few weeks earlier, when they’d managed to get themselves sealed inside overnight by way of sorcery; and on one occasion, in the back seat of one of the clan’s sleek black cars - the ones Shuuichi complained reminded him of Cold War submarines.

They had slept together before, yes. But this was different. Waking up in Shuuichi’s hotel room was different. Matoba recalled his recent memories as if from a great height, and recognized that this was not something he was allowed to have. This thing - he had to be careful not to breathe in its direction, for fear it might shatter.

Matoba came up for air. “Accident?” he said again. “Let me tell you something about fate.”

Shuuichi’s features cracked into a smile. “Please don’t.”

“Fine. You tell me something about fate, then.” He didn’t anticipate that Shuuichi had anything of value to say on the subject, but in truth Matoba sometimes just liked to listen to him talk.

“Hm, no.” Shuuichi tipped his head back, resting it against the stone lip of the pool. “If you find that scar so striking, why bother to keep it covered? And don’t give me that bullshit about wards. I know you can predict when you’ll be visited each month, more or less.”

Matoba thought of the creature. He thought of how, after its attack, his clansmen shaped their hands furtively into signs of good fortune whenever they passed him by, to keep ill luck at bay. “It makes people nervous,” he said at last. Matoba did not _always need_ people to be nervous - he just needed it when it mattered. Only when their nervousness had weight was it worth something.

At that, Shuuichi laughed aloud. “Surely it can’t be a deal-breaker! It’s hardly going to stop you from marrying some respectable exorcist lady, is it now?” The sound ricocheted, amplified a hundred fold by the water. All of a sudden, the onsen was extraordinarily small.

 _This is a game to him._ The thought clasped an iron fist around Seiji’s windpipe and squeezed.

This time, when he put his head underwater, he did not come up for air until his lungs forced him.

**. . .**

“You know, when you told me you had an idea, this is not where I pictured it taking us.”

It was approximately 9:52 PM, and the sky above the library was long since overwritten by night. The temperature had dropped significantly after sunset, and Matoba found himself tucking his fingers under his thighs in an effort to conserve warmth. He was, of course, seated in a ski-lift chair about forty feet in the air. Down below, the hillside rose and fell, the forest spreading like a dark stain to which volume and dimension did not apply. Even the night was punctuated by stars here and there, but the forest was insurmountable blackness.

Shuuichi had tried to talk the ski-lift operator into taking them up after-hours, to no avail. Even during off-season, the lift was used to cart hikers and tourists up and down the slope. In the end, Matoba had passed the man a slim stack of bills and called it even.

“Bad idea,” grunted the operator, who seemed to speak only in monosyllables. “High winds tonight. Check the forecast.”

“We appreciate your concern,” Matoba told him, with as much patience as he could muster.

“I won’t take you back down again,” the man warned, wiping his runny nose with the hem of his fluorescent orange vest. He looked directly at Matoba’s scar when he spoke, but at least he did so unapologetically. “You go up and I’m shutting the machine off for the night, you got that? There’s a trailhead at the top, just by the dropoff point. Can’t miss it. You’ll follow the markers back down.”

Not five minutes later the exorcists dangled over the forested hill, watching the operation booth retreat into the distance. The air was clear and crisp: not a cloud in sight - yet. Already the wind was picking up, and could easily blow something in before the night was over. The lights of the town and the railyard sputtered on the horizon, but down below the darkness was a solid mass with no boundaries or parameters.

“Enlighten me, Shuuichi.” The cold was distracting. “Why are we here?”

Natori Shuuichi was seated as far away as the small chairlift would allow, scrolling through documents on his phone as if his life depended on it.

“I have a theory,” he said, “about the library.”

“That much I gathered.” Matoba rubbed his hands together, trying to create enough friction to make heat. “Now would be an ideal time to tell me about it.”

Shuuichi didn’t look up. “Just keep watching the treeline,” he said. “Most of these are red pines - usually they’re harvested for lumber, but this forest is protected.”

Matoba frowned. “By ayakashi?” He hadn’t detected anything of the sort.

“By civic law,” Shuuichi said, the light from his phone screen bouncing from the lenses of his glasses. They were cracked, Matoba noticed. It was that encyclopedia that must have done it.

“Red pines grow up instead of out,” Shuuichi continued. “So there’s a good chance the tallest tree we can spot is the oldest one in the forest.”

Matoba scanned the horizon, squinting against the bracing wind. Surely there was a more efficient way to do this. Silently, he resolved never again to indulge a second-rate exorcist with a concussion.

The pit of his stomach groaned.

“Hungry?” Shuuichi fished in the pockets of his peacoat, and produced a handful of familiar-looking, individually-wrapped chocolates. “From the train,” he said, by way of explanation.

They ate in silence, save for the howling of the wind. It buffeted the chairlift to and fro, and at one point Matoba was compelled to clutch the metal railing to stop himself from falling over the side of the car. How on earth was Shuuichi's vestibular system holding up in these conditions? He had to have a cochlea of cast iron, to withstand a hit to the head _and_ this hideous rocking.

They were approaching the top of the hill when the ski-lift clanked to a sudden halt; the g-forces set the chair swinging out over the slender trail of cleared land that functioned as a skiing run during the winter months.

Shuuichi was the first to speak. “You think it’s mechanical failure, or do you think that man shut off the lift too early?”

Matoba did not even bother to look back. They were too far from the foot of the hill to discern anything. Instead, he peered into the gloom underfoot.

“We’re only about twenty feet up now,” he said. “We could jump.”

Shuuichi’s phone had manifested in his hand again. Matoba wondered idly if he kept it stashed up his sleeve for quick access. “There’s a number we can call in the event of a machine failure,” he said. “We don’t have to jump.”

Matoba exhaled slowly. Few things sounded less appealing than being rescued in the middle of the night by bumbling small-town law enforcement. _The operator,_ he thought. The operator had allowed them access to the lift even after hours. He would probably lose his job if the forest management services found out. That sounded like the sort of thing Shuuichi would care about.

“If we call the fire department, that man from the operation booth will be fired for letting us up here after closing,” he said, and relished Natori’s instant change in expression.

“Ah, you’re right.” Shuuichi slid his phone into his front jacket pocket. “I’m not sure jumping’s a good idea, though. Not when we can barely see the ground, at least.”

“What else would you suggest - waiting until morning?” It was a twenty-foot drop: the type of fall that could snap your neck if you landed wrong, but could be brushed off like nothing if you landed right. Matoba had taken worse risks and lived.

“That’s exactly what I’d suggest,” replied Shuuichi firmly. “It’s not as if we’re in a hurry.”

“Of course we’re in a hurry!”

“Are we? Why’s that?”

Matoba bit the inside of his cheek in frustration. “Because it’s cold!”

He hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but he knew he had from the way Shuuichi went very, very still. For a full minute, neither of them spoke a word.

“Come here,” Shuuichi said at last, and when Matoba shifted closer Natori tugged Matoba’s hood further down over his ears. “You make me nervous.”

“Yes.” Seiji watched his own breath cloud the narrow space between them. He did not always need people to be nervous. “I can tell.”

Natori frowned, as if the answer was unexpected. He looked at Seiji for a long moment, and when he leaned in he was so warm Matoba thought he might have a heart attack. The kiss was chaste really, but meeting the tip of Shuuichi’s tongue with his own made Matoba shiver all the same.

When Natori pulled back, the corners of his mouth quirked in a way that made Seiji feel especially doomed. “Warmer?” he asked, flashing a grin.

Seiji nodded numbly. He felt as though he had just been reeled back into his own body from someplace far away, and had to take a moment to re-acclimate.

It was then that he spotted it, on the periphery of his vision: standing straight and true, not a mile off, a conifer pierced the woodland canopy, overshooting the other trees by what must have been several dozen feet.

“Shuuichi--” he raised a hand.

“I see it.”

The wind was sharper now than ever before. It had taken on an _edge._ The chair rocked and danced in the air, and Matoba’s knuckles went white gripping the sides of the car.

He scrambled to get his bearings. “Don’t forget this spot. We’ll need to find it again, but from the ground this time.”

The chairlift’s rollers screamed to be free of their massive steel cable, as the seat pitched back and forth in the gale. _This is bad,_ Matoba thought, and took Shuuichi’s hand.

“We need to jump,” he said.

And they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫♪♬ two exorcists, chillin in a hot tub, five feet apart ‘cause they’re Not G


	3. natori shuuichi

☉

By the time it was all over, Natori had retained awareness of only two things. The first of these things, of which he was only dimly aware, was that his head hurt. The second of these things, of which he was _acutely aware_ , was that he hadn’t slept since his 9:00 AM nap on the train the previous morning - now over eighteen hours ago. For Matoba, he supposed it had been closer to the full twenty-four, but couldn’t quite bring himself to feel at all sympathetic about it.

He was ferried into a clinic where, after an unremarkable stint in a chilly waiting room, he found himself seated before a young man in a white coat, who asked him a lot of questions about how he felt. Natori felt like he’d been hit in the face with several kilograms of encyclopedia moving at a speed of roughly twenty-five miles per hour. Natori felt like he’d fallen out of a ski-lift. Natori felt like he hadn’t eaten anything but shinkansen chocolate in a moderately long while.

What Natori told the nurse was that his head hurt and he was tired. He was asked further questions, nodded and shrugged when doing so felt appropriate. He let the man take his temperature and heart rate and shine a light into his face and ask him how many fingers were being held up before him. Matoba Seiji stood in the corner, watching the proceedings through a red-rimmed gaze and looking pricklier than usual.

“Can you describe for me, please, the precise circumstances of the injury?”

Natori blinked sleepily. “I’m sorry?”

The nurse glanced up from the clipboard he appeared to treat as a bodily appendage. He seemed to be singularly focused on looking _anywhere_ but at Matoba’s scar. Natori wondered how the man ever thought he might make it in a medical profession. “How did you hit your head?”

Natori took a deep breath. “I was attacked by a sentient book.”

“Mhm.” The nurse scrawled something on the clipboard, and paused. “I beg your pardon?”

Natori attempted to flash his most dazzling grin, but the gesture felt as hollow as he did. “I tripped and fell.”

“Er, right.”

Across the room, standing in the shadow of a life-sized and anatomically-correct model of a human skeleton, Matoba coughed. Natori watched him hide a runaway smirk behind a well-placed sleeve.

Natori was sent away from the clinic with instructions to refrain from strenuous exercise, both intellectual and physical, for at least three days. Matoba did not even manage a snide remark about Natori’s inability to perform strenuous intellectual activity on a normal day; this was how he knew Seiji was truly tired, and resolved inwardly to be grateful that the side-effects of sleep deprivation worked in mysterious and powerful ways.

“We strongly advise that you take a break from work this upcoming week, if that option is at all possible for you,” said the nurse, handing him a prescription for painkillers and a medication that he couldn’t pronounce but suspected was an anti-emetic. “Be aware that you will likely experience dizziness, lightheadedness, and sensitivity to light very soon if you aren’t already. We also advise that you avoid looking at backlit electronic screens for the next couple days, to mitigate these symptoms.”

By the time the exorcists made it back to the hotel, the sun had risen over the distant treeline and was breaking, harsh and clean over the edge of town.

“It’s been a hell of a weekend,” Natori said as the elevator doors flicked lazily open. Inside, he pushed the button for their floor and held it in. Every second he stayed awake was like a pinprick against the back of his neck.

Matoba said nothing for a while, and only when his head snapped in Natori’s direction with a belated _“Oh?”_ did Natori realize that he had zoned out. He was so well-acquainted with Matoba’s long silences and clipped phrasing he forgot, on occasion, that Matoba was capable of losing his train of thought just like anybody else.

“You owe me,” Natori said, “for this weekend.”

The circles under Matoba’s eyes were bruise-dark. “Do I?”

“You pulled me out of a ski-lift.” The character on the elevator button had left an imprint in the soft skin of Natori’s thumb. “You definitely owe me.”

Matoba narrowed his eye - just the left one. The skin around the other had lost much of its elasticity, and wasn’t easily manipulated. “I’d say we’re even. Didn’t you kiss me after throwing up?”

Natori’s brain felt like puree sloshing around inside his skull. “I don’t recall,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly.

Matoba’s eye narrowed further. “When we were on the ski-lift.”

“Ski-lift? What ski-lift?!”

Seiji’s expression eased. “Shut up.”

At the door to their rooms, Natori stumbled out of his shoes, fingernails snagging on the laces. Matoba floated off into the adjacent room, and Natori heard the sound of a faucet being turned on: metallic squeal, gush of running water. He barely managed to pull off his coat before collapsing into bed.

**. . .**

The fall was neither as long or as bad as Natori had expected. The thick sod of the ski jump, allowed to grow as it pleased during the snowless spring, broke much of the impact. In truth, it was not even the twenty-foot drop Matoba had said it would be. _His damned depth perception_ , Natori thought absently in that horrifying, vacant moment of the fall - before the wind was knocked out of him and he struggled for breath in the tall grass.

“Shuuichi?”

“I’m alright,” he gasped, and sat up.

A rustle, and Matoba stood over him, blocking out the stars. “Let’s go.”

As they made their way deeper into the forest, Natori explained his theory. The weather was turning unmistakably from a bluster into a gail, and Natori had held on to the petty satisfaction of keeping Matoba in the dark for as long as reasonably possible.

“A paper mill operated in this town,” he said, passing Matoba his cell phone. All civic records of that nature were public domain, and not at all difficult to access.

“And?”

“The library...” Natori scratched at his scalp, where a small bump had begun to rise. The logic had made sense - was _linear_ \- only moments ago, it seemed, but stringing thoughts together out loud and for the benefit of another felt odd, strained, like tugging on an elastic band that refused to stretch as it should.

“The library,” Natori began again, “was built during the period the mill was operational. I suspect that many of the library’s first books were made of locally-sourced paper from the nearby forest. In the 1950s, the paper mill was shut down. Not long afterwards, much of the forest was declared protected land, and the trees could not be felled for any reason. Shortly after that, the library itself was closed and, as you said, many of the books were moved to the new branch. The books that were left behind - the unsalvageable ones - would logically have been the oldest in the library…”

“So _those books_ belong to _this forest,_ is that what you’re thinking?”

Natori nodded. The grass was tall enough in places to brush his shoulder blades; the sensation was an eerie whisper, even through layers of clothing.

“But that doesn’t make sense.” Seiji’s voice was sharp; he only ever spoke quickly when he was surprised or anxious or-- _when had Natori noticed that?_   He couldn’t say. The realization unsettled him, but he did not have the patience to pick it apart just now.

“How so?”

“Book production doesn’t take place at paper mills,” Matoba said. “Any paper made here would have been distributed elsewhere - warehouses in major cities, most likely. This can’t have been an entirely local operation.” He looked at Natori expectantly. “Surely that’s not how the publishing industry works, yes?”

Seiji’s breathless excitement was like a low current of electricity running through the air. _Spark plug under a bell jar_ , Natori thought again, and struggled briefly to identify what he was feeling before giving up. “Under typical circumstances, you’d be right," he said.

“And these are not typical circumstances.” Natori could have sworn Matoba’s smile was audible, an auricular phenomenon that could be heard even when it refused to show on the man’s face.

“Are they ever?”

The trees grew closer and closer together, sheltering them from the moaning wind and filtering out the starlight completely. Natori turned up the dial on his electric torch, setting the flashlight to full capacity.

“It was that book of yours that got me thinking,” he said. “The fairytale. You said the author’s from around here. There’s a possibility that the story is true, to some extent. But what’s more--”

“It happened here.”

“Exactly.”

Beside him, Matoba had stopped walking. Natori could not see his face, but he did not need to. Much of what he was telling Matoba, he suspected he already knew. The possibility must have _occurred_ to him, at the very least. Was it the connection between the forest and the library that had escaped him, then? Natori was so accustomed to being the confused, the unversed, the one who had to figure everything out by himself-- assuming the role of teacher for someone like _the head of the Matoba clan_ did not come naturally, and Natori felt a pang of disappointment that he couldn’t enjoy this incident for what it was.

“Book production was a much more insular industry during the first half of the 20th century,” said Natori carefully. “My guess is, if those pages managed to make it out of that building they wouldn’t even notice us on the way out.”

Matoba was so still, the cloud of air against the backdrop of chill night was the only indication of his continued breathing. “None of this sounds the least bit plausible.”

“Neither does _anything that’s happened today._ ”

Matoba looked as though he meant to argue, but in the end he breezed past all the same. Pressing on ahead, his gait set the drooping heads of the grain rushes dancing on their slender stems, bobbing in his wake. Natori turned to follow. Somewhere not far off, the sky was paling.

**. . .**

Consciousness hit him like a sledgehammer to the vestibular system. Natori’s first urge was to throw up again - only, there was nothing in his stomach, which did not present a problem so much as solve one. The sensation passed as soon as it had come. Warm light slipped in between the folds of the blinds, bathing the hotel room in honey-colored stripes. It made Natori feel vaguely as if he were inside a toaster oven. _Late afternoon?_   How long had he slept?

The first thing he did was brush his teeth. It had bothered him.

The second thing he did was check the adjoining hotel room for signs of life. Matoba Seiji was nowhere to be found; his bow was gone, as were his shoes. The bed, slept-in but empty. For a single surreal moment, Natori wondered if he had ever been there at all - or weather he’d simply dreamed the weekend up, cursed Matoba clan head and all. As dreams went, it was barely exciting enough to constitute a routine nightmare.

When he returned to his room, however, Natori found two slim, transparent child-proof bottles sitting on his nightstand. Filled prescriptions. Natori struggled for a minute with the serrated plastic lids, and then he struggled with sleep, and then he did not struggle with anything at all.

He awoke, some hours later, to the dipping of the mattress as someone climbed into bed beside him. The orange light had faded from the walls entirely, and Natori was forced to contend with the fact that he had slept a whole day away.

“If you were planning on staying in here, you could have booked one room.” He muttered the remark into Matoba’s hair. For someone who prided himself on practicality, Matoba really had far too much of the stuff. Natori lay in bed considering the potential outcomes, were he to attempt to braid it. He had never tried before, but the urge did strike from time to time. It was just as well he’d given up on asking for permission, when it came to Seiji. Of alike kind, and all that.

Natori lay there, with Matoba’s hand fisted in the fabric of his shirt and their legs twined together, and wondered how it was possible to dislike someone on principle and at the same time so fiercely take to their company.

“I could have died, you know,” he said when he knew for sure that Matoba was awake. He could tell by the breathing - by the rise and fall of his chest. Watching Matoba in action was like watching a machine...until it wasn’t anymore. Things were not as they had been. Now, it was like watching a person pretend at machinery until they had convinced themselves of the sanctity and solidity of their own nature. Natori found the latter a more engaging performance by far. He found, to his own surprise, that he wanted be be there when the performance ended - after the show. To hang around in the wings.

Matoba cracked his good eye open. The eyepatch, Natori noted, had been replaced, fluid glyphs and all. “You are being terribly dramatic.”

“No, really, I could have broken my neck.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I still think you owe me.”

Matoba’s breath tickled his collarbone. “Owe you what?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I will.” The paint on the ceiling was beginning to peel, but the hotel room felt more lived-in to Natori than his own apartment. “Another weekend, maybe. One where we do less falling from great heights. Fewer head injuries and more alcohol. You know, that sort of thing.”

He felt Matoba stiffen in his arms: a barely-perceptible contraction of muscle. “I don’t have weekends to spare.”

Natori tried to keep from laughing and did a marvelous job, though he was admittedly a biased judge. “Invent something. A cursed temple, a possession. A case of kamikakushi. I might even be persuaded to throw myself off another ski-lift, if I’m in a good enough mood. You’ll just have to put me in one.”

Seiji had sat up in bed and was looking at him now with a perplexing expression. “You make me nervous,” he said, voice tombstone-flat but ears going pink nonetheless.

Natori took hold of the front of Seiji’s hoodie and pulled him down close. “Yes,” he said. “I can tell.”

**. . .**

As it turned out, Natori was (much to his own gratification) mostly correct.

The next day, the radio station of a local news outlet reported sightings of a “massive vortex of paper” moving westward, against the wind. It was spotted landing in the forest by farmers and early-morning joggers, but when Forest Management arrived on the scene they were unable to locate the reported trash. Back in town, all that remained of the library were empty leather bindings, discarded book spines littering the streets beneath the building’s gaping windows.

These events eventually lead, some weeks later, to a civic initiative proposal regarding litter and littering, and its perceived impact on the wildlife of the area. A meeting of the town council was held outside of regular hours. The meeting was attended by upstart neighbors and known busybodies, by concerned parents, by representatives from the Society of Air Pollution and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and by the pedestrians who swore they had witnessed a cloud of rubbish vanish into the woods without a trace. The meeting was also attended by a number of impeccably-dressed individuals in dark suits, who stood at the back of the room and asked no questions and made no comments.

A rumor went around, in the months that followed, that an enterprising environmental journalist was in the process of writing an investigative piece on the phenomenon - but the finished article was promptly bought by the company that owned the library building, and what became of the story is unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remembered belatedly that Natori’s cell phone doesn’t have a touchscreen, but whatever; consistency and canon-compliance are for cowards.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me through this cheesefest of a story!


End file.
